Discussion: What about Line-Os. Do you ...

I did lot of Line-O when I was a lot younger. Well, at that time, OCAD barely existed, and "highlighter worms" were trendy. I don´t do much anymore because I like the freedom of my movements, even if it is in a 20m large space ; )

Seriously, I think it is a good excercice to learn to read EVERYTHING from a map. In some places, it is still the best technique.

Also, I have always thought that it was easier to select the biggest and/or most visible features of the terrain, if you had experience "the value" (i.e. quantity and quality of the info) of each details on the map.

I have often disliked line-o and corridor trainings because I'm bad at them. I can follow the corridor if I go very slowly, which isn't fun. If I go a little bit faster, it becomes fun, but then I get outside of the corridor, and then I feel guilty about doing the exercise badly.

If we were very honest with our questions regarding training techniques and methods, I think we would discover that behind our academic assertions about what trainings are "good" or "bad" we would find a lot of personal preference. Boris and I used to talk about how we needed to swap our evening training plans, because given the chance and two separate choices on träningsbank, he would choose the forest navigation and I would choose the pure running on asphalt, we just chose what we were best at.

Perhaps the very best are the ones that are able to enjoy the trainings in an area that they need to improve on, simply because the sense of improvement is fun. Your answer is good too, of course ;)

Some years ago, I read an interview of Arsène Wenger, the football manager of Arsenal, where he said that he wanted his players to mainly work and developp their strength as a player. It meant if one player´s strength was dribble, he was pushing him to get even better at dribbling. Same, with headers, forward passes, cross the ball, etc. He wanted his player to completely master a specific skill.

Of course, in individual sport, it is very different, as you can´t rely on someone´s else to "hide" your weakness, and football players roles are much more specific. But, in my opinion, the confidence comes a lot about mastering a specific skill. When Yannick Michiels said in June, that he knew "nobody´s faster than me", you can feel his enormous self-confidence.

In big competitions, I do believe it is really important to know you are (very) good at something, even if it is very specific, and it is worth investing time on it at training. If cheering is counting, no one is even close from you, Ross. So, keep training your voice! ; )

Back when compass was still base plate the most common bad habit was not making any plan but just rushing about straight with compass and little bit later trying to relocate on the fly. Even if you tried to make plan at some point under pressure the old habit took over and you made it again, resulting mistake or suboptimal performance. To get rid of this habit line O was suggested as training method, just to get used to read map and build a habit of it. One young talented Finn struggled with this problem and finally decide to erase the problem entirely by not taking compass at all, so it would not be possible let the old habit take over. He has been performing did pretty well ever since.

That fellow became a role model for the next generation and thumb compass became popular too. New bad habit entered, kids began to navigate by using the details they see around and (again) not having much plan and not figuring out in advance those well visible targets further away. And this is the most common bad habit that today's kids struggle with.

So, corridor trainings. Very good for those old farts who struggle with that previous century bad habit, and for those who already master this and just like to polish skills needed to do it. But it may not be that good for those kids who struggle with the second type of habit. Even if it is a good compass training it also requires navigating with pretty small details and details you already see, just the kind of navigation kids utilize way too much instead of learning to use those bigger landmarks further away. This is why I believe corridors are great, but one needs to be careful with them, those may not be that optimal type of trainings at all for some kids. Until they master it all pretty well and don't struggle with the second type of habit.